Episode Archive

Join us this week on Africa O-Yé! to explore the roots of modern highlife music, a mainstay of English-speaking West Africa during the early post-colonial era. We'll be listening to highlights from a great new compilation released this year on the Soundway label, and a few KBOO listener-members will be able to snag a copy as a thank-you gift (courtesy of Music Millennium) when you call to make your contribution during the program. /// host: Andy Hosch

celebrating Celestine Ukwu, the great singer, xylophonist and philospher from Nigeria

A special tribute to the great singer, xylophonist and philosopher Celestine Ukwu (1940-1977). Celestine Ukwu and His Philosophers National had an undeniably unique, poetic and profound approach to Highlife music fused with Igbo (Ibo) thought and tradition. The search for the meaning of life gracefully transposed into lilting melodies for brass, slide guitar, xylophone, percussion and voice. Our special will feauture vinyl selections of Celestine Ukwu and His Philophers National, along with a few select tracks of their contemporaries from the 1970s Igbo Highlife scene. Truly deep and transcendant music from Eastern Nigeria.

DJ Golden Wilson hosts a tribute to the great Guinean singer, Aboubacar Demba Camara, who passed away on April 5, 1973. Camara was the singer of Guinea's most famous band, Bembeya Jazz National, who seamlessly adapted traditional Malinke songs to modern instrumentation while rejecting French colonial influence in freshly independent Guinea. In addition to showcasing the talents of Demba Camara, we will play highlights from the golden age of Guinean popular music and discuss the deep political connection of the national record label, Syliphone, to Guinea's first president, Ahmed Sekou Toure.

Sounds from the island nation return full-circle to the land of their origin.

While there has been a prominent influence of African musical idioms in Caribbean styles, Afro-Cuban and other Latin-American hybrids have also been very influential back across the ocean in Africa. Caribbean sounds began arriving in port cities along Africa's Atlantic Coast, including Dakar, Conakry, Cotonou, Kinshasa, and Luanda, long before the advent of recorded music. West Indian sailors, the descendants of enslaved Africans, brought their culture along with the cargo ships. And African musicians, recognizing elements of their own traditions in these new musical forms, re-absorbed this into the formation of new popular forms: highlife, etc.

Wooden xylophones play an important role in many African musical cultures. On this week's show we will hear marimbas in the Zimbabwean tradition; timbilia orchestras from Mozambique, the Ghanaian Gyil, balafons from Burkina, Mali, Guineé, Senegal & Côte d'Ivoire, and we'll also make stops in Uganda and the Central African Republic. This week's host: Andy Hosch

Malinke Renaissance : Neo-traditional music from the modern heart of the ancient Mali Empire A great wealth of new music has emerged from this region of West Africa in recent decades, essentially modern in nature, but retaining the underpinnings from centuries of the griot tradition. host: Andy Hosch

Music of the influential Nigerian-born drummer Tony Allen. Instrumental in forming the foundations of Afrobeat, Allen was drummer & musical director of Fela Kuti's band, Africa 70. Immersed in his youth with the sounds of traditional Yoruba music, Juju, and Highlife, Allen adaptded these rhythms to the drum kit, with a masterful technique informed by such jazz icons as Max Roach and Art Blakey, and a deep soulful groove. Today's program will feature Allen's work from the time of his 1979 split with Fela through the present. host: Andy Hosch